SHORT TAKES AND SUCH: Of Being a Thirtysomething Senior Citizen in a College Town, Amateur Boxing, & Sweet Hitchhikers

“You're young, you're drunk, you're in bed, you have knives; shit happens..."

- Angelina Jolie (1975- ),
Actress and Adopter of Orphans

* * * *

"If I can't dance, it's not my revolution."

- Emma Goldman (1869-1940),
Anarchist and Feminist

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- He's a regular Killer Diller, walking the streets towards sexual oblivion at three a.m., a cackling buffoon of a bottle blonde in six-inch heels leaning into him to avoid slipping on the High Street ice.

Killer and blonde were, as is often the norm for the local undergrad population, overdressed for a night out in a town where the "nightclub" hot spots tend to resemble the mail-order-bride filled discotheques in some former Soviet republics.

And, being a college town with not a whole hell of a lot to do after dark, well, they were beyond hammered. At that all-too-common, black-out-and-horny point, the benchmark where responsible, consensual sex becomes merely a quick couple of grinds, a squirt or two, and a convenient amnesiac hangover a few hours later.

Like I said.

The norm in this here college town when the undergrads are the only creatures of the night making anything but sweet music.

I myself have been struggling to get a female friend to my pick-up. Not, well, because either of us were drunk and horny.

No, we were simply done for the night. And she needed a ride home. Her car died a few months back, and her new puppy was eagerly awaiting his late night piss in the snow.

We were supposed to be heading to a party afterwards but...

As we pass Killer and his red meat, I can't help but laugh. The blonde's got what looks to be piss running down the back of her leg - homegirl's so drunk, she's just letting it rip and asking Killer if he really thinks she's the sexiest thing alive.

As one gets older, wiser, more mature, one learns when "one more drink" partying often leads to nothing but a head over a toilet, or a dick in the wrong vagina, or worse.

Like "pissing yourself in designer, cunt-cutting leggings and being dragged home by a Neanderthal looking motherfucker" worse.

- MORE -

With a devastatingly fast left hook, the 175 pounder's nose burst like an overripe tomato.

Headgear, even top-of-the-line amateur gear, offers little defense against a natural murderer, a butcher of cordoned battle.

Trust me. Had my eye split open, had geysers full of red life pour from my own nose in the bouts - headgear ain't nothing but putting a quilt over a steak and waiting for the meat tenderizer.

The other fighter, a kid from a Catholic university down in Cincy, pure raw glistening ebony, could barely find a neutral corner - even he seemed to be surprised by the blow.

Crimson drops beget purple dots on the canvas. The referee began the count. The bell rang the end to the first round not a moment too soon for the Ketchup Kid.

Saturday night was fight night on the Local U. campus. And the local amateur boxing club managed to pull in a half dozen other collegiate boxing clubs for a tournament.

Murderers. Tomato cans. Killers. Bleeders and white-knuckled gloves and Everlast mouth guards galore.

Glorious! Hosanna in the Highest!

"I can't believe you'd go watch boxing over going to the Charter Day Ball," she said in a text, "I mean, you can afford $50 for a ticket...I could've found you a date..."

There were a few hundred of us, spectators to the Higher Education carnage, willing to pay a donation of five whole dollars to watch a good dozen fights that night.

"Boxing is so stupid... how can you watch that shit?"

Yes, boxing isn't a sport of civilized men these days. No, Americans have no stomach for anything but corporate-owned mixed martial arts and television wrestling.

We are CIVILIZED these days, CULTURED, SOPHISTICATES! That's why we clamor over celebrity gossip, reality television, and let talk show hosts pick the president!

- MORE -

"So, tell me," the lovely Czech hitchhiker began, green eyes aglow in the natural dusk light of the apartment, "You are... really from Virginia? Originally?"

"Yeah," the other woman said, lighting a cigarette, "[The Italian Ex-Fling] said you grew up a cowboy or... is it... country bumpkin?"

Two young European women, the Czech included, and their Afro-French traveling companion were crashing with me for what was supposed to be a night and a day - my apartment ended up turning into a bit of a hostel for foreigners for almost two days and two nights, due to winter weather.

We sat around in a circle as freezing rain fell on top of the snow outside one Sunday evening, smoking cigarette after cigarette. It was six at night, a few days after getting over the flu, and I was doing my best to be a good host - giving tips on roads and cities to avoid, offering insight on the places to eat, things to see...

I'm not going to lie. It was lust at first sight, on my end, in terms of the Czech.

As annoying as it was to have a bunch of twenty-something European hippie-ish strangers squatting in the ol' Fortress of Motherfucking Solitude, I admit to being smitten with the ex-fling's flatmate - didn't help matters that she liked to shower with the bathroom door open and wasn't fond of bras in my nipply-cold apartment.

Hey, it's been a while, dammit - and ain't no crime in, ya know, looking. Alas, she brought her boyfriend with her on their North American walkabout.

"Yep. Grew up on a farm three hours south of Washington, DC."

"Really?" The Afro-Franc chimed in, "We haven't been there yet but we're hoping to see Monticello. It's in Charlottes...town?"

"CharlottesVILLE. Beautiful fucking place. Jefferson, for all his faults, was really a fucking badass-"

Suddenly, the Czech sat up in her sleeping bag and started laughing.

"________ warned me you had a toilet mouth. Very American."

"Bad American?" I was flirting. "Or good American?"

"No," she seemed to be flirting back. "Very, just, I'd say more fun than I expected. You talk like a teenager..."

We talked for a good six hours straight, she and I, long after her traveling companions fell asleep.

And I think, yes, I laid it on a bit thick. And she was flirting right back. Czech women, for the record, are some of the most dangerously fascinating women I've encountered to date.

Dammit.

Or do piče, to be more precise.

Why did couldn't she have left the boyfriend back in Europe?

- # # # -

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-OTHER MAN: Sometimes, It's Better to Be a Lying Asshole Than to Simply Lead on a Nice Girl

“You only grow when you are alone.”

- Paul Newman

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- I'd swung by the grocery store after work, picked up some frozen mussels and lean turkey sausage, boiled them together in a four-quart sauce pan with enough herbs and seasonings to satisfy my craving for Deep South spiciness.

I sat in front of the television, in my favorite curb-recovered chair, hit the PLAY button on the DVD remote and the MUTE button on the TV remote simultaneously.

Instantly, my quiet sanctuary of an apartment was wrapped in symphonic wallpaper, that familiar overlap of diegetic and non-diegetic sound that often accompanies the opening scenes of a motion picture.

I suck down my dinner, watch Mallrats for the nine-thousandth time. Cigarette butts fill a handmade tin ashtray, a touristy trinket from Nogales, or Tucson, Arizona, or maybe from that trip to Cuidad Juarez.

It's 7:30, Eastern Standard Time. I glanced up at my cheap wall clock every 20 minutes or so. Despite my best efforts to do the simple time change in my head, I kept counting back the three-hour difference on my fingers, aloud, like a brain-damaged First-Grader.

I waited, nervously, for her call, expected sometime at or around six o'clock, Pacific, nine o'clock Eastern. I'd hoped beyond all hope that I'd figure out some way to reiterate the "You know this doesn't mean anything, right?" agreement we'd reached back in December.

An agreement I thought we'd reached. Correction. One party decided to renegotiate. For the record, there is no right way to have such a conversation, but there are literally hundreds of wrong ways. And such conversations do not get any easier with age, experience, or distance.

* * * *

Just about the time the film reached one of its major turning points, a scene involving a three-nippled fortuneteller in a strip mall, my cell phone bounces across my end table, the air around it vibrates and sends the sucker dancing into the tin ashtray. The sound the Mexican metal makes reminds me of a cowbell.

I hadn't made up my mind what to say. I answered and just started bleating into the mouthpiece, random salutations and bad jokes and comments about my ongoing dedouchebagification, my new year's resolution. She laughed, asked for the second time that day and dozenth time in a week what I was doing, who I was spending my time with, and, well, if I thought about her at all while...

I stopped her, mid-sentence.

I started to tell her all about how I thought she was starting to get the wrong idea about my intentions back in December, that, well, I still thought we could be friends and that she was a really cool person to spend time with.

What came out of my mouth was, of course, different than what my brain and heart really wanted to say.

"Well... I met this really cool chick the other day... you know. Up at the bookstore. We've been spending a lot of time together...you know... hanging out... grad student..."

Not a fib, not an untruth. Not even an impromptu distribution of strategic disinformation.

A blatant, bold-faced lie.

"Oh... Soooo.... Are you doing anything with her later?"

Once one lies, well, there is no turning back.

"Um, yeah. She's coming over and we're gonna go to a movie or something."

"Oh."

"Yeah. You know... Hey, you ever ask that guy from the surf shop out?"

Silence. Silence so painful my eyes could literally hear the flashing MUTE button on the television screen before me, could feel the freeze-framed image of Jay and Silent Bob eating away at my soul as I winced in anticipation.

I'd been leading her on.

For fuck's sake, dude! A girl calls that much, you're beyond the friends with benefits excuse.

YA FUCKED UP, YA FUCKIN' ASSHOLE.

Didn't mean to do it. Just happened. Hadn't paid attention. I'd been leading her on, in fact, since December, since I responded to her first text the day after, since I answered her calls and emails the weeks afterward.

* * * *

In a different life, one not separated by thousands of miles and the too many differences in personality and interests, I would've handled things differently.

Sadly, however, there are no different, interchangeable lives beyond the singular ones we are given.

"Well... Better be going. Don't want to keep you from your date."

"Okay. Talk to ya later, chica."

"Sure. Whatever."

Click. A hard, angry click on the other end, so firm that her own mouthpiece broadcast the slapped slide of her instantly disconnected mobile across an entire continent.

* * * *

The lie - one of the oldest and most cowardly ways to start and end It's Just a Hook-up, Right? conversations - does work. Works when a guy's 19, just as surely as it works when a guy's 29, 39, or well into his nursing home years. Women use it, too.

Unfortunately, it's also the most gut-twisting way to handle the ending of a fling.

It ends friendships, too. Ended one last week, in fact.

Someone once asked me why nice girls get lied to so much, why being a good and decent person often leads to such lead-ons and put-ons and other affronts to mutual respect.

The truth of the matter lies in the fact that nice girls are the only ones, at the end of the day, a guy worries about hurting - especially if a guy knows, deep down, that he's just too damaged to get involved with someone who deserves an equally nice guy, someone he knows dreams about tiny beach cottages and kids and perfect marriages and things he'll never want.

* * * *

I flipped my phone shut and pressed the antenna to my lips. I felt like I was going to puke up my spicy steamed mussels, almost spewed half-digested turkey sausage into that very fine Mexican ashtray I'd already filled with a dozen nervous butts.

I stared at Jay and Silent Bob, still frozen in digital clarity. I tried my best to remember how she felt, how we'd laid in bed and talked things out afterwards, how I'd felt like she, of all people, would understand that, well, sometimes, friends just fuck each other and write it off as nothing more than a simple act of mutual, spur-of-the-goddamn-moment attraction.

I couldn't. I could only think about what was in front of my face.

My hot grad student, my completely fictional imaginary date, was actually a fat guy in a trench coat and a skinny, foul-mouthed stoner.

Alone. Completely alone. With only a dirty soup bowl, dishes in the sink, and a flickering television for company.

My conscience throbbed inside that silence like a cancerous heart.

- # # # -